ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analytical framework of political agency and resistance that pays greater attention to the specificity of the social and historical context in which the subaltern classes produce and reproduce themselves materially and socially. It focuses on the work of scholars who have paid attention and given nuances to the socio-historical underpinnings of social phenomena to formulate and delineate the core elements of the socio-historical framework. The social-historical approach gives us a better and nuanced understanding of the complexity of subalterns' political agency, and their contradictory and puzzling political behaviour when faced with injustices. Specifically, it situates agency and resistance in the social and historical context in which the subaltern live, interact with each other, produce and reproduce themselves materially and socially, politicise their livelihood opportunities and challenges. The approach offers a broader but logically organised understanding of the rather fluid, slippery and complex phenomena of agency and resistance.
